Emma: A Modern Retelling

10

It took a few days for Emma to become accustomed to the absence of Miss Taylor. Breakfast, although it had always been a quiet meal, seemed now to be even more silent yet, punctuated only by increasingly audible sighs from Mr Woodhouse from behind his newspaper. These sighs might have been taken as a commentary on the state of the world – his newspaper revealed news that became worse and worse with each succeeding page – but they were not that at all: they were really expressions of regret over Miss Taylor’s departure.

‘Poor Miss Taylor,’ he said. ‘I shall never be able to understand it. She was perfectly comfortable here.’ He fixed Emma with a gaze that was at the same time both concerned and injured. ‘Do you think we should have offered her a better room? Do you think that might have made a difference?’

‘No,’ said Emma. ‘It was not a question of her room and how she felt about it. It had absolutely nothing to do with that. She met James. She fell in love.’

This elicited an even deeper sigh from her father. ‘I see no reason for her to have fallen in love; for the life of me, I just don’t. Why fall in love with poor Weston, of all people?’

Emma shrugged. ‘People fall in love with all sorts, Pops. It may seem odd to us, but presumably there are those who think James is attractive. I, for one, think he’s passable – just.’

Mr Woodhouse shook his head. ‘Impossible,’ he said. ‘Poor Weston may have a very low resting heart rate, but can you imagine anybody finding his face appealing – with that nose of his? And his eyebrows? No, I can’t understand how anybody could like such a face. Imagine waking up every morning to see that face on the pillow beside one. Imagine it! What an awful shock it would be.’

‘Miss Taylor might like it,’ said Emma. ‘In fact, I suspect that she would have settled with having any face on the pillow next to her.’

Mr Woodhouse raised his paper and resumed his reading. It was too painful a subject to be discussed any further – at least for him. Miss Taylor was now lost, even if she had telephoned to say that she and James would come for tea at four o’clock that afternoon. It simply would not be the same. He wondered what they would talk about. They would have to talk about something because when people visited you had to say something to them, and they had to say something back to you. It was different when they lived with you; then you could either spend time in silence, not having anything fresh to say, or you could say whatever came into your mind, not expecting any response.

He tried to recall what he had talked to Miss Taylor about, and found it difficult. Of course they had conversed, and done so frequently, but it had never been necessary for him to remember anything of what she actually said, and she, no doubt, had felt the same about his conversation. And yet it had all been so satisfactory – so secure – and now the whole thing was ruined by her going off to Randalls like a headstrong schoolgirl. What could have possessed her? Was it something to do with sex? It had never occurred to him that Miss Taylor might have needs of that nature – why should she? He had always felt that there was a vague primness about Miss Taylor – that was something to do with coming from Edinburgh, of course, but it went further than that. Miss Taylor was asexual – she was pure – and the thought of her harbouring a passion for James Weston of all people was almost inconceivable. Weston! It would be like sleeping with a farmyard animal – all sweat and grunts and … he shuddered. It was uncomfortable even to think of it.

Emma, of course, had other things to think about. She had been surprised at the pleasure that she had derived from bringing Miss Taylor and James together. There was something creative about making a successful introduction – something almost god-like. As a teenager there had been a brief period – no more than six months or so – when she had come under the spell of a visiting chaplain at school. This young man was only there to stand in for the regular chaplain, who was on sabbatical, but in the short time he was at the school, he had enthused a number of the pupils, largely owing to his looks, which would not have been out of place in a catalogue of male models – the sort who wear golf jackets or casual sweaters with such ease and conviction, gazing off in their photographs towards a horizon considerably more exciting than the horizons of most of us. The dreamy interest that Emma, and a score of other girls, had shown in his religious-education class had not lasted beyond his departure, but had meant that for the first time in the history of the school theological discussion among at least some of the pupils had overtaken any debate about some of the more usual subjects of teenage interest (music, the opposite sex, the incorrigibility of parents, clothes, and so on).

Emma remembered in particular a class discussion with this chaplain about the creation of the world and the granting to humanity of free choice.

‘I can’t quite see why God would have made the world in the first place,’ she said. ‘And in particular I can’t see why he should have made it imperfect. Wouldn’t it have been better to avoid all this suffering by just not making it? I mean, why would he?’

The chaplain had smiled. ‘A very good question, Emma.’

And then there had been silence while the pupils awaited the answer.

‘We shouldn’t imagine that the divine mind works in the same way as ours does,’ said the chaplain at last. ‘But even if we do that for a moment, surely it’s possible to imagine the pleasure that comes from setting something off on its course and then watching to see what happens. I’d like that, I think. I’d rather like to get a few lives going and then see how they cope with the challenges.’

That had made an impression on her, and it came back to her now as she thought about Miss Taylor and James. The chaplain had been right, she thought, even if she was not sure that his basic premise – the existence of God – could be defended. There was, she decided, a very particular pleasure in bringing two people together and seeing what would happen; in a way, it was rather as God might feel – if he felt anything. Of course it was quite possible that the results of one’s intervention might not be what one hoped they would be; there would be introductions, no doubt, that had dreadful consequences – Anne Boleyn would certainly have been introduced to that rotund psychopath, Henry VIII, and the outcome of that was undeniably unpleasant. But the risk, she thought, was worth taking, and James, benign and relaxed as he was, would hardly treat Miss Taylor as Henry had treated Anne.

It occurred to her that she might do it again, and she thought of Harriet Smith. There she was, this rather naïve but very beautiful young woman, wasting her time teaching English to puzzled students at what was, after all, a disused airfield. What a waste that was, when Harriet could be livening up her life – or having it livened up for her – with a love affair. She imagined that there were plenty of young men at Mrs Goddard’s who would leap at the chance of a relationship with an attractive girl of the English-rose type such as Harriet was. But the problem with that would be that their command of English would not be quite up to it: there would be something vaguely comic about these young men saying things like, ‘Please can you tell me the way to the railway station and, by the way, I love the colour of your eyes.’ No, it would not come out like that at all, but would probably be: ‘Excuse me please, the colour of your eyes is very blue, is it not, and what is the way to the railway station?’

She smiled at the thought, and decided that Harriet should not be wasted on a student, but should be brought to the attention of somebody of greater possibilities – somebody who could sort out the financial problems that she had alluded to and, at the stroke of a pen over a chequebook, make possible the gap year for which she was trying to save. You had to be realistic about these things, thought Emma; a hard-up boyfriend living in a garret was material for a romantic opera, but was not necessarily what you were looking for if you had no money yourself. There was no reason why solvent boyfriends could not be good-looking – and entertaining too. If she could only introduce Harriet to somebody like that – somebody who would take her away from Mrs Goddard’s school and whisk her off somewhere exotic … or at least take her out to dinner in London now and then, and to parties where people had fun and did not talk about the way to the railway station and such matters … The trouble, though, was that Harriet did not appear to know anybody, and that meant that she would need assistance in finding the right candidate for this affair she was planning – or rather that Emma was planning on her behalf. Emma thought for a moment: Whom did she know who had the money to give Harriet a good time?

The issue of Harriet Smith’s emotional future arose rather sooner than Emma had planned. It was a week or so after the departure of Miss Taylor that Emma drove into the village in the Mini Cooper her father had given her for her twenty-first birthday – given, but then immediately regretted. Cars were dangerous, and he was entirely conversant with the information that the Consumer Association published on the survivability of accidents in various types of vehicle. It was not that a Mini Cooper, even one painted, as Emma’s was, in the colour known as British Racing Green, was more dangerous than other makes of car, it was just that every car had a mortality risk associated with it, and Mini Coopers were no exception. The only entirely safe car, Mr Woodhouse felt, was one kept resolutely in the garage. However, Emma had pressed him for a car and he’d realised that if he did not provide her with one, then she could end up buying one for which the safety ratings were lower than anything he might produce.

Emma liked to drive into the village from time to time. There was not much for her to do there other than to buy the newspaper and occasional groceries, but it was an outing and it took her out of the house. After dropping in at the post office that doubled up as a newsagent, she would walk along the short village high street to the newly opened coffee house at the crossroads. A coffee house was something entirely new for Highbury, which was more tea-room territory than anything else, but it was proving popular with the locals, particularly with those who felt that the village pub had become unbearable since it had declared itself a ‘gastro-pub’ and put up its charges by almost forty per cent. Not that the coffee house was cheap, but its brews were good and there was always a selection of shortbread, muffins and scones that could be eaten while reading one of the magazines the owners thoughtfully provided for their customers. Emma liked a table by the window and would sit there for half an hour or so, checking her emails and watching the progression of people down the High Street. She knew virtually everybody, of course, and they recognised her, sometimes waving cheerfully when they saw her looking out of the window.

On that particular morning she was not aware of Harriet Smith coming into the coffee house, as she was engrossed in reading a long and rather emotional email from one of her Bath friends. This friend, who had been going out with the same young man for three years, had recently split up with him and was bemoaning the fact that now that he was gone she would have to go to all the trouble of finding a replacement. ‘I know that you don’t care one way or another about having a man on hand,’ she wrote. ‘Frankly I need to have one about the place. I just do. But finding one is such a bore, Emma, and I wish I could just close my eyes and, bang, there’d be a man.’

Emma’s reply was succinct. ‘Get someone to set you up,’ she said. ‘Either that, or internet dating, but with that I suppose you run the risk of getting some dreadful geek. Try being a nun. (Only joking.)’ She did not believe in emoticons, but this was an occasion when she thought she might just add one. While she was trying to work out how to do a wink, she heard a voice behind her and looked up sharply.

‘If you’re busy, I won’t disturb you,’ said Harriet.

Emma pressed the send button without bothering about the emoticon. ‘I’m not busy,’ she said. ‘Just reading an email from a friend.’

‘I love getting emails,’ said Harriet. ‘But I don’t get all that many. I wondered whether my spam filter was stopping them all, but it wasn’t. I don’t even seem to get much spam.’

Emma was on the point of saying that she had heard that there were such people, but stopped herself. ‘I’ll send you an email,’ she said.

‘Oh, that would be so nice,’ said Harriet as she sat down opposite Emma. ‘And I’ll reply to you.’

‘That would be really kind,’ said Emma. She was staring at Harriet. Surely somebody who looked as beautiful as that, she thought, would be constantly pestered by men. Did Harriet have to fend them off? Was there something about her – some vaguely fragile quality – that made men fear that if they got too close to her, if they actually touched her, she would break? There were some people who gave one that impression; they were not made for the rough and tumble of ordinary life.

The cappuccino Harriet had ordered was now brought to the table. ‘You’re so kind,’ she said to the owner of the coffee bar. ‘And your coffee’s so lovely. I could drink cup after cup but it would just make me all jumbled up! And heaven knows what I’d do if I were jumbled up.’

Emma looked at her with interest. ‘You could do something really dramatic,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ said Harriet, looking momentarily concerned. ‘Do you really think so?’

Emma laughed. ‘Not really. I don’t see you doing anything to be ashamed of. Not really.’

‘Well, that’s a great relief,’ said Harriet. ‘I can drink my coffee now without worrying about dashing off and doing something I might regret.’

Emma’s eye ran down the clothes that Harriet was wearing. They were nothing special, she decided; in fact, they looked rather cheap. And when it came to her shoes, these were a pair of trainers that had once presumably been red but were now a washed-out colour somewhere between khaki and pink. Somebody like Harriet, with her china-doll build, should not be in trainers, thought Emma. She should be wearing dainty soft leather shoes like ballet pumps, perhaps with a delicate bow on each toe. Shoes like that were expensive, of course, and if you didn’t have the money, or were saving it for your gap year, then they would be beyond your reach. But trainers! It would be interesting to see what a small amount of money spent on Harriet could achieve, thought Emma. It would be a transformation.

Harriet raised her cup to her mouth and took a small, cautious sip – as if the ingestion of any more copious quantity of coffee might have an immediate jumbling effect. She lowered the cup and dabbed daintily at her mouth with a paper napkin. Her lips, Emma saw, were perfect: a Cupid’s bow of a mouth.

‘There’s something I wanted to tell you,’ Harriet began. ‘I hope you don’t mind. It’s a bit of a secret actually, but I felt that I could share it with you.’

‘Oh?’ said Emma.

‘There’s a boy who lives on the edge of the village,’ said Harriet. ‘He’s the same age as me – twenty.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Robert Martin? Do you know him? I expect you know everybody.’

Emma frowned. Robert Martin?

‘His parents have that little hotel. The Oak Tree Inn.’

It dawned on Emma whom Harriet was talking about. The Martin family had owned the hotel for over ten years, and yes, she knew Robert Martin very slightly – enough to exchange a few words if they met in the street, but not much more than that. ‘Actually,’ said Emma, ‘it’s more of a bed-and-breakfast place. It’s not a real hotel.’

Harriet looked crestfallen. ‘It’s quite nice inside,’ she said. ‘They’ve got a bar and a television lounge.’

Emma smiled. A television lounge! Could Harriet really be impressed by the thought of a television lounge, which would almost certainly have patterned carpets and smell vaguely of fried food and furniture polish? Surely not.

‘What about him?’ Emma asked. ‘What about this Robert Martin? Does he help with the B&B? Perhaps he makes the breakfasts. Fries the sausages and two rashers of bacon. Makes the cold toast.’ She wrinkled her nose, but the gesture was wasted in Harriet, who beamed though the uncomplimentary description of the breakfast.

‘Oh no,’ said Harriet. ‘His mother makes the breakfasts. Robert helps to take them through to the guests.’

‘So he’s a waiter,’ said Emma.

‘No,’ said Harriet. ‘He just helps his parents – that’s all.’

Emma waited for Harriet to say something more; she did not like where this was leading.

‘He’s asked me out,’ said Harriet. ‘For dinner at the Chinese restaurant. The one on the Holt road. You must know it.’

‘I don’t really go for Chinese restaurants,’ said Emma. ‘But some people do, I suppose.’

‘Twenty per cent of the world’s population do,’ said Harriet, and then added the explanation, ‘That’s how many people are Chinese – one in five.’

Emma shrugged. ‘That’s fine,’ she said, adding, ‘for them.’ She paused. ‘And are you going to go to this Chinese restaurant with him?’

Harriet nodded. ‘I think so. I haven’t replied to him yet, but I think I will. I love the way they cook duck, you know. I love duck anyway, but the Chinese make it taste really delicious with that special sauce of theirs.’

‘Monosodium glutamate,’ said Emma.

‘They don’t always use that stuff,’ said Harriet, now slightly on the defensive.

‘But do you like him?’ asked Emma. ‘It’s all very well liking the way the Chinese cook duck, but do you like this Robert Martin?’

‘He’s rather sweet,’ said Harriet. ‘He’s got these big eyes, you see, and when he smiles there’s a dimple right there on his chin. It’s really sweet.’

Emma frowned. She had thought Harriet was weak – just the sort of person to have her head turned by the first young man to show an interest in her – but she had not imagined that she would be quite this weak. To be struck by a dimple; could she really see no further than that? It occurred to her that she could not allow Harriet to be that easily conquered, and that she would have to act to prevent this. It was not selfishness or jealousy – nothing like that – it was a simple desire to get the best for her new friend. And Robert Martin, surely, was not the best she could do, whatever dimples he may have on his chin.

‘Oh, Harriet,’ said Emma, ‘you know you really mustn’t fall for such things. Dimples? What are dimples but indentations? Are you sure you’re prepared to judge somebody on their indentations?’

Harriet looked confused. ‘He’s nice,’ she said. ‘Really sweet. I met him in the pub when I went with some students from the English course. He was kind to them: they asked him the way to the railway station and he was very—’

‘Oh, Harriet,’ repeated Emma, her voice rising with exasperation, ‘don’t be so gauche. Of course he’s going to be nice to your students – with you standing there. What do you expect? What he really wanted to say to them was “Get lost!” ’

Harriet looked uncomprehending. ‘But why would he say that?’

‘Because that’s what people say if a bunch of ridiculous English Language students come up to them and ask them the way to the railway station.’

Harriet shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t.’

‘But of course you wouldn’t, but then that’s what you’re paid for. You’re meant to tell people the way to the railway station.’

Harriet’s tone was meek. ‘They’re only practising.’

‘Of course they’re only practising,’ snapped Emma. ‘But the point is this: he was being nice to them in order to impress you. He’ll be interested in only one thing.’

‘Which is?’

Emma’s exasperation now showed. She had hoped that she would be able to water down Harriet’s attention to Robert Martin without having to be too specific. But Harriet, it seemed, was not susceptible to subtlety. ‘Oh, really!’ she said, her voice rising in irritation. ‘Do I have to spell it out?’

‘Maybe you do.’

‘All right. S … E … X. There. Clear enough?’

Harriet looked down at her faded pink trainers. Emma’s eyes followed her gaze. She noticed, now, that the thick white laces were frayed, and that one of them was about to give way.

‘Not all boys are like that. I don’t think that Robert is.’

Emma gave a dismissive laugh. ‘All males are like that, Harriet, and I’m surprised you haven’t discovered that simple fact of existence. They’re all like that. Unless they’re not interested in us, in which case they’re like that to them.’

She was sure of her ground here. There was absolutely no doubt about how men thought and about the designs they had on young women, particularly young women with Harriet’s looks and innocence. All she was doing, she told herself, was protecting a naïve young woman from a young man who would use her and then, without any shadow of a doubt, toss her aside. That’s what men did; it was just what they did.

She wondered whether she sounded prudish, or, worse still, whether she was prudish. If Robert Martin wanted to have a relationship with Harriet, and if Harriet liked the idea, then what was wrong with that? People slept together, and was there any reason why Harriet shouldn’t sleep with this boy? What would she – Emma – feel if he were to come along and proposition her rather than Harriet? Would she respond? She shivered, and thought: Why do I shiver when I think of sex? Did everybody else shiver, or was it just her?

Harriet was quiet. ‘I don’t know …’ She looked up at Emma, who realised, at that precise moment, that Harriet was clay in her hands.

‘I don’t think you should go out with Robert Martin,’ she said firmly. ‘You’re wasting yourself. It’s going to go nowhere, you know. It’s not the way to the railway station, so to speak.’

‘He’s—’

Emma interrupted her. ‘He’s nothing, Harriet. He works in a B&B that masquerades as a hotel. You could aim much, much higher than that, you know. You owe it to yourself.’

‘To myself?’

‘Yes. It’s a question of what you could make of yourself. You told me that you don’t have parents.’ She hesitated, but decided to continue. ‘Or you said that you don’t really know your father. That’s a big disadvantage in life – not coming from somewhere.’

‘You’re very lucky,’ said Harriet. ‘You’ve got your dad and that house and your Mini Cooper.’

Emma acknowledged her good fortune with a tilt of her head. ‘You could have all that. You could do something with your life – if you don’t go and jump into bed with the first random who comes along and asks you.’

‘I wasn’t going to leap into bed with him,’ protested Harriet. ‘I was going to go to a Chinese restaurant. There’s a difference, you know.’

‘So the second date would be a Chinese restaurant too?’ challenged Emma. ‘And then the third as well? Think of your monosodium glutamate levels, Harriet Smith!’ She laughed. ‘No, he’s got his head screwed on the right way, that Robert Martin. He knows how to get what he wants.’

Harriet fell silent. Emma watched her carefully as she lifted her coffee cup and took another sip. She did not think that she had overstepped the mark, but she was not quite sure. She had been a bit extreme, she decided, but it was so clearly in Harriet’s best interests that a few possibly rather extreme things be said; of course it was.

She need not have worried. Harriet put down her coffee, dabbed at her lips again, and looked earnestly at Emma. ‘You’re really kind,’ she said. ‘I’ve got nobody to tell me these things, I suppose. I just wouldn’t realise.’

Emma stretched out a comforting hand. ‘I just didn’t want to see some very ordinary boy getting his grubby hands on you,’ she said. ‘Not when you could do so much better.’

‘But what should I do?’ asked Harriet. ‘I told him that I could probably go with him on the date. I said I just had to check.’ ‘Then there’s no problem,’ said Emma. ‘Do you have his number?’

Harriet nodded. ‘It’s in my phone,’ she said.

‘Then text him,’ said Emma firmly. ‘Say I’m sorry but I can’t come out. Got to work. Sorry.’ She paused. Harriet had taken out her phone and was searching for Robert Martin’s number. ‘And then you could add something like See you sometime. That’s clear enough.’

‘But maybe I shouldn’t see him … You said …’

Emma would have sighed had she not reminded herself that she did not want to turn into her father, with his frequent, eloquent sighs. ‘Saying to somebody that you’ll see them is utterly meaningless,’ she said. ‘See you, means, in fact, goodbye. Sometime means never. But if you want to be absolutely unambiguous, you could add the word not. That, though, would be cruel, and I wouldn’t do it.’

She watched as Harriet sent the text. She had not imagined it would be so easy, and for a moment she felt a pang of guilt. That surprised her because guilt should not come into it: this was helping somebody who very obviously needed her help; it was not idle interference. She looked out of the window. There were people in the street, and one of them, getting out of a rather more expensive car than one would expect a clergyman to drive, was Philip Elton.

She watched as the young vicar locked the car door behind him and made his way into the newsagent’s. He was wearing jeans, and they were well cut, and his shoulders, from behind at least, were quite broad for a clergyman’s shoulders. She wondered what age Philip Elton was. Vicars were usually ancient and wore baggy cardigans with buttons up the front. This one was very different. Late twenties? Twenty-eight maybe? Not much more. And he owned a large office block in Ipswich, they said, and somebody had said that there was a block of flats in Norwich too. Not a large block of flats, but if one thought of the rent for just a single flat these days and then multiplied it by the number of flats in the block – say ten, because most blocks of flats had at least ten flats in them – then that gave you at least seven thousand pounds a month, once one had allowed for maintenance costs and so on. If the flats were better, of course, or if there were more of them, then that figure would be even greater and would allow Philip Elton to have an even more expensive car, and a great deal more besides.

She looked at Harriet. It was very unfair that there were so many people who were able to take gap years that they often did not really appreciate, and yet here was this vulnerable, rather sweet girl who was having to scrimp and save to have any prospect of affording even a modest gap year which would probably end up being somewhere cheap and utterly obscure, such as Malta, perhaps, where she would teach English to people who wished to be able to get to the railway station, or working in a chalet in a French mountain resort, trapped in the kitchen, washing up and making soup while well-heeled skiers enjoyed themselves in the snow outside, shooting down the black runs, drinking mulled wine and eating cheese fondues at high-altitude restaurants.

She turned to look at Harriet once more. Of course, Philip Elton was the obvious candidate: single, well off, good-looking … The fact that he was a bore was neither here nor there – Emma did not think one actually had to listen to a man, and Harriet’s conversation was pretty frothy anyway. They might just hit it off, both talking but neither paying any attention to what the other was saying. The difference of a few years or so between Harriet and Philip was hardly significant, and anyway he would not be a permanent fixture. Harriet could continue to work at the school for a few more months and then he could relieve himself of his parish duties – he was after all, non-stipendiary and therefore could not be told what to do by his bishop – and then they could go off on the gap year together, staying in comfortable hotels and allowing Harriet to spend the whole year on a succession of beaches if she so desired. What was wrong with that? And then she could come back and she would have a bit more sophistication and worldly wisdom to her and she could apply to a university and get rid of Philip. She might even get a place, possibly at Oxford, where the C in drama might be perfectly adequate provided that Harriet could describe herself as sufficiently disadvantaged – and she did come from a disused airfield, after all; surely that would count for a lot. Or she could get a job in London and be launched. There would be numerous eligible young men after her by that stage and she would be able to pick and choose. There would be no more trainers; those would have long since been replaced by expensive designer shoes – in several colours. There would be no more cheap-looking clothes. There would be no more naïve remarks. Harriet would be transformed. Who said: ‘… changed, changed utterly’? Some poet they had studied at Gresham’s. Yeats or Keats: their names were so close that nobody could be blamed for mixing them up.